Challenge 1

Story 4

Author: Choose_Love_H_S

I walk into the house, running my hand along the wall trying to locate the light switch that I am sure was on this side of the room, I can feel the dust which has been left to mount up in the years of neglect, building on my fingertips.

Eventually, I feel the hard plastic and flick the switch, the light bulb flickers a few times and finally emits a steady flow, illuminating the piles of newspapers and rubbish strewn across the floor. The Back wall is covered by a huge bookshelf filled with the old volumes I remember my Grandmother reading to me as a small child.

It's been three years since she passed away, and despite her leaving this old hunting cabin to me in her will, this is the first time I have found the strength to venture up here. I find myself drawn to the bookshelves, and pick up a leather-bound volume at random, flicking through the pages I notice something protruding through the paper and struggle to find it.

As I reach page 186 I locate my target, taped to the page is a small silver key. I recognize it straight away, I thought I'd lost it! It belongs to the diary that I wrote here as a teenager when my parents would send me to spend the summer with Grandma to get some "fresh air in the country" I always hated them for making me come here, I wanted to spend the summers with my friends, playing on the beach, meeting boys and sharing scary stories around bonfires, and I spent hours and hours complaining to the empty diary about my horrible parents not understanding what how it felt to be stuck here.

I carefully peel the key from its page and head down the hall to what was once my old bedroom, wondering if the diary is still there. To my surprise, the diary is in the top drawer in the bedside table, just where I left it all those years ago. The lock clicks open easily and I start to flip through the pages and begin to read a passage from shortly after my 15 birthday.

I begged him to stop, I tried to explain that we are just friends, that I don't look at him like that, but he wouldn't listen. He pressed his cold wet lips to mine. I didn't like it. I don't want him to do it again. I turn and call my husband and show him the story and we both collapse on to the bed giggling, because the boy in the story giving me unwanted kisses, is the same man I married eight years ago.

Clearly, his persistence paid off in the end.